Bianca Spender, Fashion Designer

I did dreadlocks once, like mad mad dreadlocks…

…so I use [O&M] Know Knott sometimes. For hair is all natural and untreated, it’s virgin hair.  For me the biggest difference is the shampoo and conditioner – I’m the girl that would never go to a hotel and use their shampoo and conditioner. When you have an incredible conditioner, it just keeps the moisture in and the curls kind of hold and it looks beautiful. Otherwise, it’s a disaster. Sometimes it’s curls, sometimes it’s ‘I put my finger in the power point’.

I’m a very simple girl…

…I find something that I love then I use it.  I use Aesop body wash, hand wash and hand moisturiser. I also use Cetaphil. It’s super basic I get allergies from perfumes [in beauty products]. I’m also a total MAC girl, MAC everything.

I don’t do a sexy red lip…

I love a lip, but a dark, purple, plum. I’ve done pink, but not the really bright orange-y red shades. Because I don’t wear much jewellery, sometimes it just gives me that colour and definition, I think it’s just fun. I don’t have clothes on that are super sexy, [I prefer] kind of a minimal, organic [style] and I just find a strong lip gives a nice hot edge. I love Linda Rodin lipsticks – they’re beautiful. They’re very bright though. There’s kind of a thing with undone hair and lip that’s not, ‘I just came off the beach’.

I have an old vanity from my grandmother…

… I’ve never met her, she died before I was born. She had two boys, so they weren’t excited about it. One day we were going through the cupboards when my dad moved out of his old house and I found it. I was like, this is so precious! I asked if anyone wanted it and my sister thought I was impractical and my dad said no, so yay, it’s mine. I haven’t used it yet though, I’m too scared of breaking it.

My mum was always about what you put in your body…

…what you drink, eating really well and I’ve always been a person who prefers simple ingredients. Just letting your skin breathe [from within]. My partner and I are also vegetarian, we’re very healthy.

I’d be really happy to have a bath every day…

I’m a total bath head. I just can’t do anything without a bath! I love yoga, swimming and walking. I go to the beach or the pool, and the yoga class is two blocks away at 6:30 in the morning. I go to Sukha Mukha, it’s very low key, everyone’s doing their own thing, I really love it. It’s important to unwind. I don’t drink coffee because I work such long hours sometimes, if I relied on coffee to keep me going I wouldn’t know when my body was telling me to rest. I know I’d just keep going and going if I had coffee.

I want a black metal compost bin…

… that has a flip lid! Now I use an Aesop packaging box. You only want your compost bin to be small because it makes you fill it. When you drop it, without a lid, things fall around the side and the bin ends up dirty… This one really seals because it has a lid.

I’m an aesthetic person.

I put hair gel in my bag in a glass jam jar [because I don’t like packaging]. I even take muesli and things, when we go away, in jars. My husband is like, but it’s heavier… But I think, if we’re driving, it’s much nicer to pour muesli out of a glass container than it is out of a plastic container. All of my spices and teas go in glass jars too.

I’ve never had a television…

…they become a focal point of the room, so one day I was thinking of have a projector screen in the room that [can] disappear. We only have laptops and not even a computer. For my kids, I feel their visualisation powers are stronger [without a TV].  We only have laptops.